The rate of compliance with medication regimens in outpatient settings is generally regarded as poor. Even under the watchful eye of doctors, studies have shown that trained professionals working in a controlled setting make significant errors in the delivery of medication to patients. Compliance with such medication regimens have been shown to be worse after the patient leaves the hospital and the medication management is required to be performed by the patient or some other untrained family member. For example, studies have shown that patients directed to take a single medication once per day have only succeeded about 70% of the time. Studies have further shown that, when three doses per day are required, compliance with such medication regimens falls to about 50%. Further, such studies show that compliance and compliance failures for such medication regimens do not correlate with social, economic, or educational variables.
Failure to comply with medication regimens prescribed by doctors can have severe consequences. For example, in the outpatient setting, a patient's recovery can be slowed and progress toward recovery can be minimized by the patient's failure to follow the prescribed medication regimen provided by a trained professional. Such lack of compliance can help in the development of drug resistant strains of bacteria and viruses. For example, tuberculosis has developed certain drug resistant strains in Africa due to the fact that rural patients have begun lengthy medication regimens that required multiple doses but fail to follow through and complete these regimens. Thereby, the tuberculosis has been allowed to persist in a form that has become resistant to the treatment being used. Such drug resistance strains could be minimized if the patients were able to properly follow through with their medication regimens.
A further concern applies to certain classes of medication that are prone to abuse. For example, certain narcotics and anxiety reducing medications are known to be addictive. For such medications, a patient will often begin to take increasing amounts of the medication at more frequent intervals that do not comply with the prescribed regimen set forth for the use of the drug. The controlling of dosing for these medications in the outpatient setting is so notoriously difficult that many physicians have simply begun to refuse to prescribe them.
Concerns about the diversion of a medication from the patient to other individuals have reduced the outpatient prescription of such drugs. For example, medications such as Oxycontin have addictive qualities and also have street value as a recreational drug. Often, people who are prescribed such a drug end up selling it to users who consume it recreationally. This concern is so great for Oxycontin that some state legislatures have considered banning its use.
In the examples provided above, drugs that were once valuable to society have lost part of their effectiveness through their misuse in one way or another. Therefore, in light of the above, a need exists for a system that allows outpatient medication to be dispensed in a secured, controlled, and monitored fashion to more effectively manage and organize the care given to a patient.